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The tireless researcher Charles Fort was widely known as the chronicler of what are now called “Forteana,” bizarre anomalies and mysteries that throw the current perception of reality on its ear, whether it be religious or scientific. In an attempt to explain these anomalies, which include weird stories or “myths” and enormous, astonishing ruins worldwide, anumber of people, including Swiss writer Erich von Daniken and Zecharia Sitchin, have created the “ancient astronaut theory,” which dictates that alien visitors have been influencing human life for thousands if not millions of years, even to the point of genetic manipulation. von Daniken, it should be recalled, was one of the first moderns to put forth the ancient astronaut theory and was widely ridiculed and vilified for his observations.

Because of Sitchin’s apparent scholastic training, he becomes more credible for many, even though he is one of those renegades not scholastically trained in his field. Furthermore, it should be noted that neither man came up with the ancient astronaut theory, which was largely developed by a German occultic society, for one, during the 19th century.imagesSupporters (“Sitchinites”) claim that Sitchin is one of the few people who read the Sumerian language and that because he can read Sumerian, he must be interpreting the data properly. The assertion that he is one of the few scholars of Sumerian is not true. Moreover, the idea that someone may be able to read a language and therefore can interpret its data properly is a specious argument, because the one certainly does not guarantee the other. Years before Sitchin, biblical and Dead Sea scrolls scholar John Allegro studied Sumerian intimately and came to very different conclusions: To wit, that many of the words revolved around sex and drugs. Hence, it is not the “mere” ability to read the Sumerian that will produce an accurate rendering of it.

Biblical Bias?Like so many other paradigms that make it into popular culture, the alien astronaut theory has been agenda-driven. In fact, it seems that the most recent attempt may be prompted by the same type of motivation that produced the Bible, a chronicle largely consisting of the plagiarized myths of other cultures that were reconstituted as “humans” of a particular ethnicity. It appears that the Anunnaki thesis has now led to the conclusion that, while the Bible is not infallible, its god Yahweh is valid and its various characters are the superhuman alien-hybrid progenitors of “the chosen.”In reality, there was no reason to recreate the ancient gods as aliens or humans, because the ancients themselves were quite clear about what it was exactly they were worshipping and fancifully describing in epic poetry. The speculation is not needed, as, for example, the Sumero-Babylonians themselves said that the gods were the planets, not people, and that their stories were myths representing personifications of these bodies.It is believed that by “dismissing” the myths of the ancients as myths, we are somehow robbing them of their “history.” This claim is ludicrous, as it is those who insist that there are no myths who are actually defaming the ancients. It seems as if everyone has already forgotten the work of the learned and esteemed mythologist Joseph Campbell. Campbell knew that major biblical tales, such as that of Moses and the Exodus, were mythical. In his book Occidental Mythology, following a discussion of the Bible, Campbell turns to the “Gods and Heroes of the European West,” and says, with apparent resentment:“Fortunately, it will not be necessary to argue that Greek, Celtic or Germanic myths were mythological. The peoples themselves knew they were myths, and the European scholars discussing them have not been overborne by the idea of something uniquely holy about their topic.”Perhaps mythology is simply not as exciting as the UFOlogical paradigm, whereby ancient astronauts were buzzing all over the place, being worshipped for their extraordinary capacities. However, the desire to see such a “history” often seems to be coming from exposure as a youth to comic books and sci-fi movies—and even the History Channel these days, featuring “Ancient Aliens” shows!